SaitÅ Ryokuu
Ryokuu Saitō (Japanese斎 藤 绿 雨, real name: Saitō Masaru (斎 藤 贤), born December 31, 1867 in Kobe (now Suzuka ) in Mie Prefecture, † April 13, 1904 ) was a Japanese literary critic, writer and essayist.
Saitō visited Tokyo in the Meiji Hōritsu high school (later Meiji University ), which he left without a degree to be a writer, and from 1884 to learn the craft of writing at Robun Kanagaki. He began his literary career as a literary critic before he became known for his satirical and parodic novels like Abura jigiku (油 地狱, 1891). A collection of his essays appeared already in 1889 under the title SHOSETSU hasshū (小说 八 宗). He died in 1904 at the age of 36 from tuberculosis, after he had published in newspapers his own obituary. Among his pupils was the writer Kosugi Tengai.